Chai tea (latte) linguistics

It’s good to be a bit random once in a while. Or, seen from another perspective, this isn’t random at all, but a very simple example for emerging possibilities to learn, find information and look at research data in a digital environment.

Take as an example the different words for what in English is usually called tea. The practice of consuming a beverage based on the leaves of the tea plant can be traced to ancient China and reaches back thousands of years. While there are a range of words for the concoction in the world’s languages, two roots dominate. According to Östen Dahl:

Most words for ‘tea’ found in the world’s languages are ultimately of Chinese origin, but they differ significantly in their form due to their coming via different routes. The differences begin already on Chinese soil. Most Sinitic languages have a form similar to Mandarin chá , but Min Nan Chinese, spoken e.g. in Fujian and Taiwan, has instead forms like te55 (Chaozhou). The Dutch traders, who were the main importers of tea into Europe, happened to have their main contacts in Amoy (Xiamen) in Fujian. This is why they adopted the word for ‘tea’ as thee, and in this form it then spread to large parts of Europe. The influence from Amoy is also visible in many languages spoken in the former Dutch colonies, as in Malay/Indonesian and Javanese teh . However, the first European tea importers were not the Dutch but the Portuguese, in the 16th century; their trade route went via Macao rather than via Amoy, and consequently Portuguese uses chá , derived from Cantonese cha . Likewise, languages spoken in those countries in eastern Europe and Asia which got their tea overland rather than from the Dutch tend to use forms such as chai . In Standard English, the [e:] vowel changed into [i:] (although a form conventionally spelled tay is preserved in some dialects) by a general sound change, and this pronunciation is reflected in many languages that took over the word from English, e.g. Yoruba (Nigeria) tii , !Xóõ (Botswana) tîi, Cocopa (California and northern Mexico) ti .

So chai and tea have the same origin, but today chai predominantly means masala chai (the preparation of tea with spices and milk). Here’s a table that shows both expressions as they occur in different languages. But the really cool thing in my view is this – a map showing the distribution of both terms around the world, using data from the WALS.

Why would we care about something like this? Apart from sheer curiosity, I think the potential for new insights based on openly available research data is vast. Who knows what enough eyeballs can find and in what ways such data can be used? It’s all a matter of putting it out there, for all the world to see.

I’ll conclude this bit of trivia by getting myself – you’ve guessed it – a fresh cup of… coffee.